make your wars
by faithunbreakable
Summary: The one where they're perfectly normal men in the twenty-first century. Except for where they really aren't. Gennish, pre-Charles/Erik. AU.


Warnings: Mentions of war, child abuse, homosexuality, murder and hints of PTSD. …Wow. I pretty much manage to hit all the buttons in 3000 words.

Disclaimer: God, the things I would do if I owned them. Alas, this will have to do.

A/N: I find it fascinating how I can just sit down and _write_ in this fandom, without any sort of prompting or plan. This was spawned by nothing but the very small thought of, 'How would those two translate into the real world?' Still, this could probably use some refining. I am, however, too tired. The title is so random it's not even funny anymore. Enjoy.

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**make your wars**

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Erik leaned against the side of the apartment building he had just more or less stormed out of, body tense. Goddamn, liberal, pacifist, artsy trust fund babies.

He had no idea why he'd let Emma drag him along to this little 'get together among friends'. Yes, she'd actually used those words. Going to college had turned her into a monster. As if the fact that she made a living digging around other people's heads didn't make her unbearable enough. Erik loved his foster sister most days, really, but why she'd chosen to become a shrink of all things…

No. Lie. What annoyed him wasn't that she was a shrink. It was that she kept trying to shrink _him_. And did things like drag him to dinner parties hosted by her pretentious, annoying friends. One of whom was also a shrink. The others were mostly artists of some kind. Useless, little shits with big ideas and bigger mouths.

Raven was into sculpture and apparently painted everything she could get her hands on blue and red. It expressed her inner aggression and the plurality of identity she lived as a modern woman, or something along those lines. Erik had listened to little she said beyond 'hello'. Hank was… okay. Hank was okay. He was nerdy and all about science but at least he kept his mouth shut. Sean wanted to be a rock star and looked like a groupie and Alex… Erik had no idea who and what Alex wanted to be when he grew up and stopped being a cocky playground bully.

And then there was the other shrink, who had introduced Erik's sister to all these crackpots. Charles Xavier smelled of privileged, arrogant, old money from two miles upwind. He had presided over the whole dinner with an air of paternal benevolence that set Erik's teeth on edge, doing nothing. He and Emma had talked business, leaving Erik to the wolves, excuse him, _artists_. Babies. Babies who had no fucking clue what the world was like. Who'd never gone hungry, never frozen half to death, never lost anything important in their lives. Never watched their parents die, never killed, never hurt, never grown up in the system, alone and afraid. And yet they kept complaining about how hard they had it. So much homework, such high rents and oh god, Raven's latest installation just didn't take off, woe, woe, woe.

Erik had suffered it all silently until the conversation had turned to the war. It was cruel, it was unjust, it was a _travesty_, inhumane and monstrous and all about greed and hate and it was all so senseless.

Never mind the soldier sharing their table who'd lost men in that war, hell, had lost himself in that war. After high school, Erik had wanted nothing more than to get the fuck away from everything he knew. Enlisting had seemed like the thing to do and he didn't regret it. Didn't regret his two tours in Iraq. Soldiers went where they were told to go. They fought the wars they were told to fight.

Erik was good at fighting. Erik was great at it, actually. Good little weapon.

The trust fund babies had ripped into everything he'd almost died for, with the viciousness of children, unable to comprehend half of the propaganda they were spewing. "It's a necessary evil," Hank had dared pipe up, only to be shot down ruthlessly by the others.

Erik had wanted to strangle them all with his dogtags. The only thing stopping him had been the fact that Emma would give him that look again, like he was broken and he couldn't…

Grunting to himself, Erik took a deep breath, inhaling clear night air. War was over for him. No reason to get worked up. These kids had no idea what it was like. They were just talking out of their asses, to use a terrible Americanism Emma was fond of. Emma. He wasn't going to ruin this for her. Couldn't. Not after she'd put up with him for the past ten months and been great about it, attempts to get in his head aside.

Digging through his jeans pockets for the crushed pack of cigarettes he knew was in there, he considered just leaving this party. He could call up Janos and Azazel, get dead drunk with them and not remember his name in the morning. That was the great thing about the military. If nothing else, you made drinking-buddies for life and Janos and Azazel had been through hell with Erik. They understood without him having to say a word.

Who needed a sister with a diploma when they had coping mechanisms like that?

He finally found his smokes, slapped one into his palm. Dangling it from his lips, he fished around the half empty pack for his lighter and came up empty.

Of course. Because this night couldn't possibly get any worse. Clenching his fists tight enough to probably ruin the remaining cigarettes beyond hope, Erik closed his eyes. In. Out. He was not going to go up there and murder anyone. Nor was he going to drink himself half to death. He was a well-balanced individual. He was normal. He was human.

Who was he kidding, he was a weapon without a purpose and a whole load of nightmares that woke him screaming in the middle of the night. He was broken.

To his left, a lighter _snicked_. His eyes flew open even as he took an automatic step away from whoever had managed to sneak up on him, hands rising in defense.

Charles Xavier watched him move from the other side of the flame, calmly, evenly. Erik wanted to bash his head in.

Then Xavier said, "I'm sorry about the children."

Like he wasn't only less than a decade older than them. Six, seven years at most. Still, he said it like he meant it. _The children_. Like he really was their father, come down to apologize for them. Like they'd broken someone's window, or trampled someone's roses.

It was so very quaint that it seemed utterly alien to Erik. He wondered, fleetingly, what common ground Emma could possibly have with any of those people.

With a flick of his wrist, Xavier offered the flame again and Erik was tempted to not accept, to watch the man burn his thumb. In the end the need for nicotine won out and he bent forward, held the end of the cigarette into the orange flicker of light and took a deep breath until he felt the paper catch.

Smoke curled in the air between them as Xavier let the lighter snap shut and tucked it away. Apparently, he wasn't actually a smoker. Just liked to carry around lighters. He seemed like the kind of person who did things like that. Erik hated him for that.

He leaned back against the wall, smoking in silence. He hoped the younger man would get the hint. He didn't.

"Emma said you did two tours in Iraq," he commented, almost idly, leaning next to Erik, close enough for them to share heat in the cool spring night. Too close. Far too close. If he noticed Erik stiffen, he gave no indication.

Since he wasn't actually asking a question, Erik felt no obligation to answer, deciding to force himself to close his eyes instead. Maybe he could stick his fingers in his ears and hum, too. Maybe that would make the annoying man go away.

Xavier shifted but didn't take the blatant hint. "Did you know," he finally tried again, "that by the time the light of the stars reaches us, some of those very stars have already stopped existing? What we see are only echoes."

Erik took a drag from his cigarette and asked without opening his eyes, "Are you flirting with me or trying to heal whatever trauma Emma has convinced you I suffer from?"

Xavier's snort was the first thing he did in Erik's presence that was not perfectly poised and smooth. "I don't need Emma to see that you're traumatized. It's obvious in every move you make, from the way you carry yourself to the way you focus on your breathing when someone annoys or startles you."

Erik gritted his teeth and remained perfectly still.

Xavier blithely ignored the clenching of his jaw and went on. "However, that is not why I'm out here. I honestly came to apologize for the children. My sister in particular has very strong ideas about violence."

"What? The idea that it's evil and all perpetrators should be shot?" Erik found himself asking, sarcasm bitingly sharp on his tongue. He had no idea why he was even talking to this man.

A little chuckle. "Well, she believes in the evil of violence, at least. She believes that nothing can ever be made better with violence."

"How quaint." It was out before he knew it and he couldn't say he regretted his words. The bitter, resentful tone they were delivered in, maybe, but he'd learned long ago to never take anything back.

Xavier shook his head. In the semi-dark, Erik felt it more than he saw it. "Her story is her own to tell, but believe me when I say Raven's beliefs are not unfounded. She was eleven when we met for the first time and her life before I took her in…" he trailed off, shook his head mournfully.

So the Xavier siblings weren't actual siblings. Unexpected.

"She tried to pick my pocket, of all things. I took her home, fed her and when she told me she wasn't having sex with me just because I was nice to her, I offered her the guest room, I locked myself in my bedroom and let her have free reign of the apartment the whole night. Surprisingly, she was still there in the morning." He laughed a bit at the memory, less amused than awed, surprised maybe, at himself, at what he did.

It was Erik's turn to snort. "So you're some kind of good Samaritan. I can't say I'm surprised."

He got a shrug in response, dismissive, but Erik could hear the little smile in his voice when Xavier spoke. "I do what I can. But make no mistake, my friend,"

- They were friends now? –

"I abhor violence as much as my sister does. Unlike her, though, I accept the fact that it is sometimes necessary."

"Necessary." Erik repeated, blandly. He didn't think he had ever been called that before. Many things. His talents had made him popular in the military. His skill with weapons of any kind, his ability to kill a man without blinking. He'd been called a hero, a monster, a good man, a bad man. Many things. But never _necessary_.

"Yes. Some things in this world simply cannot be met with anything but violence. Some _people_ speak no other language."

Thinking of Schmitt, the kindly, elderly neighbor that shot his mother because her son was playing too loudly and she refused to shut him up, Erik silently agreed. Agreed and felt the hate rise in him, old and familiar and anaesthetizing.

The cherry of his cigarette burned the tips of his fingers and he held on to that feeling, that pain, for a long second before dropping the stub and stepping on it. Some people understood no other language but violence. In this metaphor then, Erik was the translator. He was the one that put things in their terms, the one that used their words. Words like blood, like pain, like knife and gun and fire and ice and death.

Xavier kept talking, oblivious to or ignoring Erik's sudden influx of emotion. Or maybe he just loved the sound of his voice. "I want to be a pacifist, but life has taught me better. Raven and her friends cling to ideals that I sadly know to be unrealistic. I have not the heart to take away what they believe in. Life will do that, sooner or later and if it never does, I'll be glad."

How condescending, how patronizing, could one man possibly sound?

"Yes," Erik drawled, his voice like razor wire in his mouth. "I imagine life must have been terribly hard on you. All that money. All those things. All those friends."

The other man didn't rise to the bait. Erik hated him for that, too. Instead Xavier only sighed. "I would simply tell you that we all have our ghosts, but I do not believe that would satisfy you, would it, Erik?"

His name didn't roll off Xavier's tongue, smooth and easy. It came with a sharp, raspy _R_, with a hard, glottal _K_. Erik hadn't heard his name pronounced like this – in German – since the day his mother had died. The day she'd told him everything would be alright and lied. It paralyzed him, that simple sequence of sounds in the mouth of a man who was a stranger. A man he wanted to hate. Did hate, simply because they were opposites in all ways.

Fiercely and suddenly, he found himself wishing for gunfire and desert winds. At least those he understood. At least those were clear. Kill or be killed was so much easier than polite society.

"How did you know?" he asked, half choking on the words. Calm, he told himself. Himself ignored him.

Xavier shifted, came impossibly closer still. Their shoulders were almost touching now. Too close. Still too close and closer still. "Your name, for one. The way you pronounce certain consonants. Emma mentioned in passing that you're the son of immigrants. I deduced the rest."

"Clever," Erik allowed. It wasn't meant as a compliment.

Xavier, of course, took it as exactly that. "Thank you."

Silence stretched in the miniscule space between them and Erik wanted to move away but didn't. Apart from Emma, this man was the first person to put up with Erik's prickly attitude since he had come back from his second tour. The only one who could stand to be around him. The only one he could stand to be around. Perhaps it was the lack of pity the other man exhibited. And disgust.

Those were the prevalent emotions in most people when they saw his dogtags. Pity or disgust. Poor soldier or thrice-damned baby killer. There seemed to be no space in-between. Erik lived, dangling above the abyss of that void, every day.

Xavier was soothing in the way cheap whiskey was. It burned, but it warmed you, too. So Erik stood stock still, torn between going and staying, paralyzed like a new recruit in his first firefight.

"Do you like war?"

"What?"

"Do you like war?"

What? "Are you asking me if I enjoy killing?"

Xavier seemed to mull over that for a moment before answering. "In a roundabout way, I believe I am."

No pretenses. Or maybe too many. Erik was confused and annoyed. And out of cigarettes, since he'd crushed the few he'd still had. The pack felt flat and empty in his pocket, probably raining tobacco everywhere.

"I'm good at it," he finally admitted, because it was dark and he was tired of pretending otherwise.

Xavier didn't react to the confession at all, saving Erik the trouble of having to bash his face in. He was ridiculously grateful. They stood next to each other in the dark until it became almost comfortable, almost companionable, truth hanging between them like it didn't matter at all.

Erik breathed.

The silence was ended ten minutes later by a screech from somewhere above their heads, followed by roaring laughter.

Xavier sighed and pushed off the wall. "I believe that is my signal to go and peel Sean away from the Karaoke machine." He frowned up the steep façade, looking rueful. "And possibly my sister off of Hank before she gives the poor lad a heart attack. What a waste that would be."

He smiled at Erik, a brief flash of teeth in the dim light from the street and then turns to leave.

"Xavier," Erik blurted at the man's retreating back. He stopped, looked back over his shoulder. "What happened?"

When he was greeted with silence, he pushed himself to stand straight, too, and elaborated. "What happened to change the pacifist's views?"

He sounded dry, even to his own ears. Caustically amused again, instead of raw like ground meat. Better. Xavier barked a short laugh without humor. Above them, through an open window, Sean's rendition of _I Will Survive_ garnered exclamations of disgust. The neighbors were going to riot any minute. Although, come to think of it, the Xaviers probably owned the building. Or paid unhappy neighbors off with new cars, or something equally ridiculous.

Erik was starting to think he wasn't going to get an answer when Xavier finally spoke, hands hidden in his pockets, looking older than his late twenties. "My stepfather spent most of my formative years trying to beat the freak out of me."

No faster way to learn all about violence than to have it done to you. But, "Freak?"

This time the chuckle contained real humor. "Earlier, when I was talking about the stars?" Xavier waited for Erik to nod before admitting, "I really was flirting with you, I'm afraid."

Startled by the admission, Erik laughed, loud and explosive. Sudden. Above them, silence suddenly fell, as if the kids had heard him. Although Emma would be the only one to recognize the sound. And even she hadn't heard it in a long time. The thought made Erik laugh harder, for no reason he understood.

"Did you hit back?" he asked, sobering up after too brief a moment. Xavier was watching him steadily, amusedly. He didn't mind all that much, surprisingly.

"No. It never occurred to me," Xavier admitted, easily, with the distance of time and wisdom. "Did you?"

The memory of Schmitt's face, bloody, beaten, _hurt_, flashed in front of Erik's eyes, briefly overlaying reality. The police had pulled him off the man too early. "Yes," he hissed, standing proud.

Xavier accepted the admission like he had expected nothing else.

"Oh, and Erik?" he asked, already turning again, a final parting shot. "My name's Charles."

Then he pushed open the front door and disappeared into the bright rectangle of light. Chuckling despite himself, Erik took three quick steps forward and caught the door before the lock engaged.

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I'd appreciate some feedback here, boys and girls. Please.


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